By and Gone
by Solain Rhyo
Summary: Marking all the differences in Kenway's life, had only Mary Read lived to see them all. Implied Kiddway.


_**Sol's Notes:**____Just finished AC 4. I loved the ending, though I hated that Mary was gone. Obviously I'm a KiddWay shipper. Just a little something I was thinking of as I watched the credits roll._

**.x.**

Anne Bonny wonders, sometimes, what Mary Read would have thought of the way the reckless, tumultuous life of Edward Kenway eventually resolved itself.

It was no secret how Mary Read disguised as James Kidd felt about Captain Kenway. _Bloody greedy fool_, she'd often said. And: _there ain't nothing but the glint of gold driving that one._But Anne had been able to hear what it was Mary was trying so hard not to say, those nights they spent drinking in taverns in whatever port the winds had carried them too. Anne heard the affection and the humor, heard too subtler inflections in her words, the longing for the impossible, the craving for what would likely have been the end of peace as Mary had known it.

Would have been the end of peace for Edward, too, Anne muses as she begins to sing, watching as the captain in question makes his way down the slopes of Great Inagua, carried by an uncharacteristically hesitant step toward the pier. Toward the ship that was near to docking. Toward the passenger it carried that would, Anne knew, capture his heart as completely as the sea and wind and the _Jackdaw_ had.

As Anne sings, lifting her voice to carry on the breeze so that it might reach Edward, she tries to picture her friend, imagining how she'd fit herself into this ending. Had Mary lived, it would have been a simple eventuality that she and Kenway would drift together, pushed by the same stubborn forces of fate that had carried them all this far. For as Anne knew Mary had so admired Kenway, she knew too that Kenway had so admired her in return. _Gone too soon, love_, Anne thought, _but for our turn in Jamaica and he would have been yours, and eager about it, too_. And thinking of what could have been between the woman she'd called closest friend and the man she respected above all others, the words in her song hit a plaintive note to echo the hollow ache in her heart.

After her song is done, Anne slips between the crowd gathered on the terrace. Assassins, pirates, dancers—most faces are familiar to her, speak to her with words of greeting or inquiry. And those she doesn't know smile at her and she smiles back, because she's Anne Bonny and she's _alive_. Away from others, she makes her way over to the bluff overlooking the cove. Unerringly, her eyes find Kenway as he stops before stepping foot on the pier, kneels, and picks a bunch of flowers growing in the shadow of the harbor master's shack. And sudden tears flood Anne Bonny's eyes, moved as she is by his actions, by the evidence that the man kneeling in the dirt below her is a far, far cry from the man she'd first met in a tavern all those years ago.

No, Anne decides, it's not hard to imagine Mary at Kenway's side. Not hard to imagine the way she'd find something to lightly, fondly chide him for, tease him about. Not hard to imagine her voice, the hypnotic way her words lilted as she spoke. And to see them within the shadow of that shack before the ship has moored, embracing as never they were able to do together, to see Mary wrap her fingers around stray strands of Kenway's tawny hair and tug his head down for a kiss. For a time Anne herself fancied Kenway, but he was not a man for her. No, he was a man for a woman as bold and challenging as himself. He would have—_should have_—been the man for Mary Read.

_Too many would haves, should haves, will nevers_, Anne thinks. Too many dead, too many more forgotten. But Mary's memory won't fade, not from Anne and not from Edward. Anne clings to the strongest of her recollections of Mary Read even as she watches Edward reach the end of the pier and turn to face those disembarking from the newly arrived ship. Watches as he kneels again. Watches as he holds out his small, humble bouquet to the young girl who shyly makes her way down the ramp. And there's the tears again—_stop your bloody simpering, Anne!—_as she watches Edward Kenway greet his daughter for the very first time.

Anne turns, faces the house and the people gathered outside. Carousing. Celebrating. And plotting, Anne knows, her eyes finding a small clustered group of assassins that are deep in discussion. Such a different world it would be with the dead still in it, with Calico and Thatch and Vane still alive to bolster any such occasion. Anne begins to walk back toward the house, craving a drink, craving a seat, craving maybe a man, if there is such one whereabouts as to tempt her enough. Thinks back on the times she and Mary had raised their own particular brand of hell, chaotic enough to make even Calico proud.

Such a different world, empty of Mary Read. Better for having her in it, though, and Anne Bonny would drink to that.

**.x.**


End file.
